Does Beijing Approve of North Korea's Nuclear Ambitions?

The Bush
Administration and Congress should take the February 22 news that a
Chinese emissary to Pyongyang had persuaded North Korea's dictator
Kim Jong Il to "signal a possible return" to the six-party talks on
denuclearizing the Korean peninsula with a healthy dollop of soy
sauce.[1] China's public stance on North Korea has
been consistently supportive of Pyongyang and critical of
Washington. Nearly two years of talks have yielded zero
progress.

In fact, the
situation has worsened. North Korea has announced it has fissile
plutonium, has threatened to transfer bomb-quality material
presumably to rogue states or others inimical to U.S. security, and
has even said that it would demonstrate a nuclear device. Finally,
Pyongyang announced on February 10 that it has manufactured nuclear
weapons, allegedly for self-defense. China's reaction has been
to declare its undying support for its fraternal Korean socialist
state and to heap even more economic aid on that regime of
self-imposed poverty.

The Bush
Administration understands that China has not supported the U.S.
goal of CVID, or complete, verifiable, and irreversible
dismantlement of the North Korean nuclear program, but it has
nonetheless given China's participation a positive public
relations spin. While there is some short-term utility to
continuing the six-party talks, they cannot be allowed to drag on
indefinitely. Rather, the time has come for the Administration to
evince skepticism and concern about China's lack of
cooperation in the North Korea nuclear issue and to begin to
prepare the international community for the likelihood that North
Korea's transgressions may have to be referred to the United
Nations Security Council for formal economic sanctions.

Beijing in Nuclear
Denial

Despite news on
February 22 that a Chinese emissary to Pyongyang had persuaded
North Korea's dictator Kim Jong Il to "signal a possible return" to
the six-party talks on denuclearizing the Korean peninsula, the
Chinese Foreign Ministry hinted that the "ball is in the American
court."[2] China's public stance on North Korea has
been consistently supportive of Pyongyang and consistently
critical of Washington. After nearly two years of Beijing-hosted
multilateral talks on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons ambitions, there
has been no progress. (The lack of new North Korean missile or
nuclear tests cannot be seen as progress because either would
undermine Beijing's agnosticism about Pyongyang's
threat.)

Instead, the
situation has grown worse since the talks started in April 2003.
North Korea has announced that it was producing weapons-grade
fissile plutonium from spent nuclear reactor fuel rods, that it
might "transfer" fissile material or "demonstrate" that it indeed
has a nuclear device,[3] and, most recently, that it has
"manufactured nukes for self defense."[4] Even faced with such
irrefutable evidence that North Korea was at least claiming to have
a nuclear device, the official reaction from Beijing was feigned
disbelief.[5] China's reaction has been to declare its
undying support for its fraternal Korean socialist state and to
heap even more economic aid on that regime of self-imposed
poverty.

Kong Quan, Chinese
Foreign Ministry spokesman, actually seemed sympathetic to the
plight of Kim Jong Il during a routine diplomatic press
briefing on February 22, 2005. He explained that Wang Jiarui,
the Chinese Communist Party's "minister of international liaison"
(and a senior official who is co-equal with and non-subordinate to
the foreign minister), had a lengthy meeting with the Korean leader
over the weekend and passed on a "verbal message" that expressed
China's "aspiration to further develop ties between China and
[North] Korea, and [China's] concern and stance about resolving the
nuclear issue on the peninsula."[6] According to Kong:

The Korean side
expressed their determination to denuclearize the peninsula, that
they did not oppose the "Six Party Talks" nor had they any
intention of withdrawing from the talks, they only want conditions
to be mature, and then they will return to the "Six Party Talks."[7]

He went on to
explain that on February 10 (the day the North Korean government
announced it had "manufactured nukes for self-defense"), "the
Korean side had proposed a few requests and suggestions, and
we hope that all sides, especially the actors directly involved can
give some serious consideration, act with sincerity, and
evince some flexibility, to these issues and suggestions." In
case anyone missed it, Mr. Kong repeated the phrase "sincerity, and
flexibility" seven times.[8]

When asked "which
suggestions" from North Korea "does the Chinese side believe are
particularly important," however, Kong demurred that he was "not
certain of the other details of the meetings Minister Wang had
with the Korean side." In effect, the Chinese Foreign Ministry
spokesman was asking the United States to "give serious
consideration" to "suggestions and issues" raised by North
Korea (which Kong described as "reasonable concerns") even though
he himself was not "certain" about the substance of these
suggestions and issues. Finally, when a reporter asked, "how long
is China willing to tolerate a nuclear North Korea," Kong
countered, "you mentioned the time limit issue, this is not the
question that we ought to stress at the present time."[9]

China's policy is
clear. A denuclearized Korean peninsula would be desirable, but the
issue "must be resolved peacefully." There is no time limit to
resolving the issue, and China has no details about Korea's
"reasonable concerns." China's only demand is that the "parties
directly involved, that is, the United States and [North] Korea"
show sincerity and flexibility.[10]

The Chinese Foreign
Ministry resolutely refuses to treat North Korea as the real
malefactor in the nuclear imbroglio, despite its illegal uranium
weapons program, its avowed reprocessing of fissile plutonium,
its withdrawal from the Nonproliferation Treaty, its expulsion
of U.N. weapons inspectors, and its routine threats and bombast.
Instead, it is the United States, China insists, that must be
"flexible" and "sincere." This must be why so many intelligent
diplomats, academics, and even normally cynical journalists think
China is simply an "honest broker."[11]

China Not an Honest
Broker

A more systematic
look at China's stated policies toward the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea (DPRK) reflects far more empathy in Beijing for
Pyongyang's situation and far less empathy for the U.S. position
than a truly honest broker would have.

The Chinese Foreign
Ministry still has not acknowledged North Korea's February 10
announcement that it was a nuclear power. "We have noted the
relevant reports and are now watching developments," a Foreign
Ministry spokesman shrugged on February 17, adding noncommittally
that "we have consistently advocated the denuclearization of
the Korean Peninsula and the maintenance of peace and
stability on the peninsula."[12]

The Chinese reaction
contained neither a whit of regret nor a hint of blame. Last June,
after the U.S. Department of State briefed top Beijing diplomats
yet again on North Korea's uranium program- backed by intelligence
from Pakistan's "Dr. No" (Abdul Qadeer Khan)[13]-Vice Foreign
Minister Zhou Wenzhong told TheNew York Times that
Beijing had no reason to believe such a program existed and that
the United States had yet to provide convincing evidence.[14]

No Criticism of
Pyongyang Allowed

This is hardly
surprising. As one recently retired Deputy Assistant Secretary of
State explained, "any adjustment of the traditional PRC stance
toward North Korea is controversial within the Chinese leadership,
and not likely to be touched by people who want to protect their
positions."[15] Chinese leader Hu Jintao himself seems to
be a big fan of North Korea. Last September 29, according to the
well-informed Hong Kong journal Kaifang, President Hu
directed the Central Propaganda Ministry to issue a 29-article
injunction against criticism of the North Korean regime,
saying that, "despite facing temporary economic difficulties,
politically [North] Korea has been consistently correct."[16]

This message was
conveyed directly to the North Korean leadership that same month by
senior Politburo member Li Changchun, who pledged
that:

all nations and all
peoples, benefit from [North] Korea's practical choices and
determination of its own road to development…which has been
advantageous to the realization of the people's wealth and
happiness, to the embodiment of the pluralistic world, and also is
fundamentally beneficial to the protection of regional stability
and world peace.[17]

Interestingly, the
English-language version of Mr. Li's comments left out most of the
praise of North Korea, particularly the adjective "beneficial"
describing North Korea's efforts to protect regional stability and
world peace.[18]

This official praise
was so lavish that Beijing has never permitted any of its media
organs to raise doubts about North Korea's nuclear weapons
program. One that tried to do so last August, Zhanlue yu
Guanli (Strategy and Management), was shut down
permanently.[19] In early January 2005, another respected
journal of international issues, Shijie Zhishi (World
Affairs), reportedly published an article by Zhang Liangui, a
professor at the Central Party School of the Chinese Communist
Party, that "forcefully argued that if the current North Korean
nuclear stalemate is not settled by July, the issue could be
brought to the U.N. Security Council by October."[20]
The World Affairs home page was taken off the Internet
shortly thereafter and has yet to reappear.[21]

Do Beijing and
Pyongyang Coordinate Policy?

It is not, however,
just a matter of Beijing's banning criticism of the DPRK in
the media. There is also a tremendous amount of circumstantial
evidence that Beijing and Pyongyang coordinate their policies
on North Korea's nuclear weapons program. In April 2003, just one
day before China hosted so-called three-party talks between
American and North Korean diplomats, Pyongyang's top military
leader, Colonel General Jo Myong Rok, met with Jiang Zemin, Hu
Jintao, and China's most senior military commanders.[22]
The big news at the three-party session came when the North Korean
representative told U.S. officials that the DPRK had nuclear
weapons and threatened to export them or conduct a "physical
demonstration."[23]

In mid-July
2003, Gu Xiulian, vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of
China's National People's Congress, visited Pyongyang to officiate
at ceremonies marking the 42nd anniversary of the DPRK-China treaty
of friendship, cooperation, and mutual assistance. Ms. Gu
gushed that "China and the DPRK have pushed ahead with their cause
of socialist construction…respecting and supporting and
complementing each other in the spirit of the treaty." She further
noted that the two countries "made important contributions to
defending the peace and stability of China and Korea and,
furthermore, the rest of the world, closely cooperating with each
other in the international arena."[24]

Within a month, what
"cooperating closely" really meant became clear. Just a week before
the first session of the six-party talks (which included Japan,
Russia, and South Korea) in August 2003, China dispatched General
Xu Caihou, head of the People's Liberation Army General Political
Department, to Pyongyang for consultations on the upcoming
negotiations.[25] Immediately afterwards, North Korean
Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Yong Il averred during the Beijing
talks that the DPRK "will prove to the world that it possesses
nuclear weapons by carrying out a nuclear test" and promised
that it had the means to deliver nuclear weapons.[26]

Although some
American officials tried to depict the Chinese representative at
the August 2003 talks as shocked by the North Koreans' behavior,
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi instead blamed the
talks' failure on the Americans. "The American policy towards
DPRK-this is the main problem we are facing," he told reporters at
a meeting in Manila three days after the Beijing meetings.[27] At
no time did the Chinese ever evince public displeasure with North
Korea's behavior.

Instead, as
Pyongyang grew progressively obstreperous following the ugly first
round of six-party talks, China arranged to send the second-ranking
man in the Politburo (after Hu Jintao), National People's Congress
Chairman Wu Bangguo, to Pyongyang, ostensibly to cajole Kim
Jong Il back to the negotiation table. It took nearly a month to
straighten out Wu's itinerary. When Wu arrived in North Korea on
October 29, he took a Chinese trade delegation and a $50 million
glass factory-something for which the North Koreans had been
importuning the Chinese-in addition to stepped-up deliveries of
fuel oil and food aid to the DPRK. After Wu returned from North
Korea, the Chinese then pressured the United States to carry out a
"first-stage action measure" by removing North Korea from the list
of state sponsors of terrorism and lifting all economic
sanctions-pressures that the Administration strongly
rebuffed.[28]

Beijing finally
managed to "persuade" Pyongyang to return to the six-party
talks, and a date was set for late February 2004. Minister Wang
Jiarui then visited Pyongyang just ahead of the second round of
talks in Beijing.[29] Again, Chinese- Korean cooperation was in
evidence: When those talks concluded, the only "progress" had been
a reiteration of Pyongyang's acknowledgment of its program to
extract weapons-grade plutonium from spent fuel rods at the
Yongbyon nuclear plant. China's position was expressed by Vice
Minister Wang Yi, who stated that Washington must first give up
what Pyongyang calls a "hostile policy" toward the isolated
communist regime.[30] The vice minister made it clear that the
important thing for China was the "talks process," not
results.

A third round of
talks was scheduled for June 2004, but in mid-April, North Korean
dictator Kim Jong Il visited Beijing. The senior Chinese official
welcoming the "Dear Leader's" armored train as it crossed into
China at the Yalu River bridge at Dandong was Chinese Communist
Party International Liaison Department Minister Wang Jiarui, who
then sat in on Kim Jong Il's meetings with Jiang Zemin and Zeng
Qinghong.[31] Given this background, it is hardly
surprising that the only development of any substance during the
June talks came when the North Korean representative said, on
the record, that "some in Pyongyang wanted to test a nuclear
weapon," a threat that the State Department dismissed as "not
something new."[32]

To date, there has
not been a fourth round of talks, and China is still playing the
role of "honest broker" by ostensibly trying, with great fanfare,
to persuade North Korea-whose demands are allegedly "reasonable"-to
return to the talks. "Just having talks," the Chinese Foreign
Ministry explained on February 17, "is tremendous progress."[33]

Beijing sees talks,
not results, as important because as long as talks are supposedly
progressing, the U.S. will not take the matter to the United
Nations Security Council, where China would have to veto moves to
sanction the DPRK. Moreover, the talks give Beijing leverage in
Washington, which is especially valuable as Tokyo and Washington
muse about their common strategic objective of promoting the
peaceful resolution of issues concerning the Taiwan Strait through
dialogue. China's leaders clearly have an interest in keeping the
six-party framework going indefinitely. After all, in the
previously cited words of Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman
Kong Quan, "the time limit issue… is not the question that
we ought to stress at the present time."

What Should Be
Done

Faced with this
situation, the Bush Administration should:

Be openly skeptical
of China's role in the six-party talks. Even though the
talks may serve some short-term purpose, it is unlikely that, in
the long run, they can succeed in producing a complete,
verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear
weapons program.

Begin to prepare the
international community to move the North Korean issue to the
United Nations Security Council. The complete,
verifiable, and irreversible dismantling of North Korea's nuclear
program can be accomplished only through concerted
international pressure in the form of broad economic and
political sanctions approved by the United Nations Security
Council. While there is still some utility to continuing the
six-party talks framework, the longer the United States, Japan, and
South Korea tolerate North Korea's nuclear weapons arsenal, the
harder it will be to induce Pyongyang to abandon it.

Given
this harsh reality, the international community must be
prepared for the eventual collapse of the talks. Official U.S.
statements should not put a positive spin on China's stance by
pretending that China shares the goal of denuclearizing the Korean
Peninsula or by conveying the impression that the U.S. will support
the continued survival of Kim Jong Il's regime. At the very least,
the United States should also mention China's insistence that the
U.S. and Japan must also meet Pyongyang's demands for economic and
energy aid, diplomatic ties, and removal from the terrorist
list.

Should
China or Russia balk at bringing the matter to the Security
Council, then the United States and Japan should make it clear that
China and Russia must bear responsibility for North Korea's actions
and that the United States, its allies, and friends will coordinate
their own efforts under the Administration's Proliferation Security
Initiative.[34]

Work with allied
nations on enhanced coordination of the Proliferation Security
Initiative. Several U.S. allies
and friends in Asia, particularly Japan and Taiwan, have indicated
a willingness to coordinate monitoring and surveillance of North
Korean maritime activity within the context of the PSI. The United
States should step up training and readiness drills with PSI
partners.

Conclusion

In dealing with the
North Korean nuclear issue, the Bush Administration's negotiators
must now prepare for the endgame, first by acknowledging that
China's main, if not sole, interest is to prolong the six-party
talks process indefinitely so that the world eventually will come
to accept a nuclear North Korea in the same way it has accepted a
nuclear India and nuclear Pakistan. China most likely calculates
that North Korea, as a nuclear power, can complicate U.S. strategic
planning and use its increased leverage to extort international
food and energy aid with which to prop up Pyongyang's
tyrannical regime.

The Administration
should set a timetable for moving the issue to the United Nations
Security Council, where China and Russia must be confronted with
the reality that North Korea has abjured its international
treaty obligations to dismantle its nuclear weapons program and
arsenal. The United States must then be prepared to make it clear
that if the U.N. is to have any hope of preventing the
disintegration of international nonproliferation regimes, it
must adopt punitive measures against North Korea, such as economic
sanctions. Finally, the United States should be prepared to fall
back on the PSI framework should China block Security Council
action.

John J. Tkacik,
Jr., is a Senior Research Fellow in the Asian
Studies Center at The Heritage Foundation.

[10]Ibid.
See also
"China Says US, N Korea Must Be More Flexible on Nuclear Issue,"
Associated Press, February 22, 2005, at
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_CO_20050222_000859,00.html
(February 22, 2005).

[11]Diplomats and
journalists regularly style China's role in the North Korean
nuclear debate as that of an "honest broker." See, for example,
Philip P. Pan and Glenn Kessler, "U.S. Agrees to Talks With N.
Korea," The Washington Post, August 2, 2003, p. A18, and Dan
Blumenthal, "Unhelpful China," The Washington Post, December
6, 2004, p. A21, at www.washingtonpost.com/
wp-dyn/articles/A38379-2004Dec5.html (February 22,
2005).

[14]Joseph Kahn and
Susan Chira, "Chinese Official Challenges U.S. Stance on North
Korea," The New York Times, June 9, 2004, p. A12, at
www.nytimes.com/2004/06/09/international/asia/09chin.html
(February 22, 2005).

[18]One article in
English dispensed with praise of North Korea altogether. See "China
Urges Strengthened Cooperation with DPRK," People's Daily
(Beijing), Internet Edition, September 12, 2004, at
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200409/12/
eng20040912_156703.html (February 23, 2005). Another said that
"China backs the DPRK in its advocacy for an independent and
peaceful reunification, and its efforts to improve its
international environment." See "Top Chinese Leader Expresses
Readiness to Promote Ties with DPRK," Xinhua News Agency, September
12, 2005, at http://news.xinhuanet.com/
english/2004-09/12/content_1973284.htm (September 25, 2004, but
no longer available on Web page).

[20]See Tadashi Ito,
"Blockading the North Koreans," originally published in Sankei
Shimbun (Tokyo), January 15, 2005, and translated into English
at
www.ocnus.net/cgi-bin/exec/view.cgi?archive=62&num=16200&printer=1
(February 23, 2005).

[21]World
Affairs is published by
World Affairs Publishing and can be accessed at
www.wap1934.com. World Affairs had a link at
www.shijie.org, but it was dead as of early February
2005.

[22]See "Chinese
President Meets Jo Myong Rok," Korean Central News Agency
(Pyongyang), April 22, 2003. General Jo was in Beijing from April
21-23. The "Three Party Talks" began on the afternoon of Wednesday,
April 23.

[34]The Proliferation
Security Initiative is an international coalition, created by the
United States, that includes Australia, Canada, France,
Germany, Japan, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal,
Spain, Singapore, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom and is aimed at
enhancing intelligence-sharing on the proliferation of weapons of
mass destruction, freezing the finances of WMD dealers, and
interdicting shipments of WMD and their delivery systems at sea. In
October 2004, Japan hosted the Team Samurai 2004 PSI exercise with
warships from the United States, Australia, and France. A Chinese
nuclear submarine, which set off an international incident when it
was detected in Japanese territorial waters on November 9, is
suspected of having monitored these PSI drills. See William
Hawkins, "Chinese Realpolitik and the Proliferation Security
Initiative," Jamestown Foundation, China Brief, Vol. V,
Issue 3 (February 1, 2005), at www.jamestown.org/publications_
details.php?volume_id=408&&issue_id=3217.